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Author Rendell's Book
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A Dark-Adapted Eye
two women fight over someone. the frightening effect of their fight can be brought to resolution...or will it?...A Judgement in Stone
This is a story of how a woman's inability to read or write actually destroys her humanity and causes her to murder her father and the family for whom she then works. The first sentence of the book tells it all, "Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write. Eunice is the sad product of a poor upbringing in Tooting, London. She has spend her life blackmailing people, such as her friend Annie. Annie continued to claim...A Sight For Sore Eyes
The lives of several Londoners cross with disturbing results when an obsessive and remorseless young woodworking art student named Teddy Brex comes of age after years of emotional neglect at the hands of his dysfunctional family. He has been raised in an environment without affection and so it is no surprise that he finds himself feeling nothing for the deaths of his aging parents, Jimmy and Eileen Brex, from ill health. Most sinister is how little tho...A Sleeping Life
Wexford and Burden investigate the death of a middle aged woman in Kingsmarkham. All the clues point to her London life, but they find no trace of her - apart from a link to a mysterious writer....

Rendell booklist

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
This is an excellent story about a woman who on the surface appears fairly normal, if not a bit odd at times, but in actual fact after having a relationship with a man, who runs off to be with another woman, she begins to hear voices and become delusional. Minty believes her boyfriend to have died in a rail crash, but then she starts to see him in all kinds of odd places, this results in her actually murdering him - but believing she has only murdered hi...Anna's Book
Three seemingly unrelated story-threads, a famous diary, the transcript of a murder trial, and a contemporary narrative by the diarist's granddaughter, are brilliantly woven together to shed new light on a grisly early 1900s murder and the identity of a child who went missing at the time. ...End in Tears
Wexford is a policeman in a middling size British town. The case begins when a piece of concrete is dropped from a bridge onto a car. Later, a young woman who was driving under the bridge at the time turns up dead. She had a thousand pounds in her pocket, which no one can account for. Another young woman, an acquaintance of the first victim, turns up dead also. Wexford is led to believe the murders are connected and that the two victims were involv...From Doon with Death
This was Ruth Rendell's first published book and her reader's first introduction to Chief Inspector Wexford and Inspector Burden and the Sussex district of Kingsmarkham. A young housewife is reported missing to Inspector Burden by her husband who has come home from work for the first time in nine years to an empty house and no meal on the table. Margaret Parson's life was very dull but when a few days later her body is discovered in a local wood Wexfor...Kissing the Gunner's Daughter
In perhaps her most exciting Inspector Wexford mystery, English writer Ruth Rendell
provides great fare in “Kissing the Gunner's Daughter.” Three bodies are discovered on a
country estate and one survivor lives to report the crime to the police. It is a bloody and
sordid mess and it takes Wexford and his right hand assistant Mike Burden and all their
resources to figure this one out. Somehow, things just don't add up with this crime and
Wexford, ...Put On By Cunning
Is the death of eminent flautist Sir Manuel Carmague an accident? It certainly looks that way to Inspector Wexford and the investigating team. The old man has slipped in the snow ending up in a pond underneath a layer of ice. But suddenly his long lost daughter turns up to claim her inheritance and suspicions are aroused. ...

Ruth Rendell list of books

Road Rage
Inspector Wexford case this time involves something more personal. This time his wife Dora has been taken hostage and he fears for her life. In "Road Rage," the respected inspector looks closely at an environmental issue, as construction of a new highway is about to render the harmonious setting of Kingsmarkham asunder. Dora happens to be actively engaged in opposing the construction, so much so that she is kidnapped. It is up to Wexford to unravel...Simisola
Inspector Wexford comes face to face to one of the most
disturbing crimes in his career. Or is it a crime? A young immigrant housecleaner is missing. Where could she have gone, this young girl who knew no one in her new country.......The Face of Trespass
Gray (Graham Lanceton) is a writer living in poverty and loneliness in a shabby cottage in Epping Forest. He has written a book, The Wine of Astonishment, but lately he isn't writing at all. He is still upset because his mother remarried when he was 15; she now lives in France and Gray doesn't have too much to do with her anymore.
He did have a wonderful love affair with a very rich young woman, but she asked him to do something he just couldn't do. She...The Rottweiler
Crown, Nov 2004,
ISBN: 1400051908
In London, a murder victim had a bite on her neck so the media dubbed the killer The Rottweiler”, but that is so far from the truth about this murderer for the next two fatalities failed to include the bite. Instead the serial killer uses a garrote on his or her prey and takes an object from the deceased. Somehow these objects end up in Inez Ferry's antique shop.
The police investigate everyone associated wi...Thirteen Steps Down
As the story unfolds we learn that Gwendolen was one of those females whose life was determined and controlled by her overbearing father. After her mother died, she was expected to take care of Mr. Chawcer and never to strike out on her own. Unfortunately, he lived to the ripe-old age of 94, thus never giving his daughter a chance to meet people, especially men. He had made up his mind that she was not "marriage material" and would be better off reading ...